Recent reviews by lime-eater

I want to like Gauntlet for N64 nostalgia...
but having finished it with my brother like The Good Old Days™...
...this feels like store brand Coca-Cola.

Game is surprisingly unchill. It's actually amazing how frustrating Train Valley 2 can be. The most annoying quirk is easily the game deciding to dump me out of track-building mode after a few seconds. What's up with that.

Trains' clickboxes are too big too, which makes switching tracks for them a pain at some angles. Many levels have beginner trap design with expensive buildables which will actually softlock you -requiring a reset. Some levels have hidden mechanics that are outright impossible to predict so you'll end up retrying those several times as well. No skipping, you have to do the levels in order. For my perfectionist brain anything less than max completion doesn't feel right, but the game hates me.

I just wanted a simple train game. Train Valley 2 has terrain height and buildable tunnels + bridges which is exactly what I wanted, but it's missing some other key aspects. Trains don't take up space in stations, they just teleport back to your extradimensional railyard I guess. It leaves out interesting decision-making of what to do with trains at stations with no cargo to haul - aka "dead mileage". Levels can take upwards of 20 minutes to complete... so missing out on a perfect score due to a single misaligned track at the end sucks. Being personally responsible for every turn of every train concurrently without a single automation tool on the rats' nests network the maps force you to make isn't what I wanted after all.

Not Recommended.

This review is for the devs. We will be watching your career with great interest :)

These are all UI feedback (except one).



Research Complete Popup: I want a button to mute voiceovers from Major Researches. I like reading the tech descriptions but the yapping makes it hard to concentrate.

Councilors' Feedback: in the top right corner could bring me to the appropriate spot to act on that advice. For example, if a councilor informs me my space mining is lagging behind, why not add a button to direct me to the Hab page? This and a dedicated Close button in case I'm already aware would be great.

Fleets and Ship Construction + Habs Buttons: A tooltip in the hab screen that explains I need control of a Launch Facility to begin creation of my own stations/bases/ships. I got stuck on this for several hours. Having 1 Launch Facility became my priority when I discovered this which finally let me start on the meat of the game.

Uhhh: I had a close call with an meteor shower on my first station. I was advised to invest research into Point Defense, so I did. Then... it wasn't an option to build? Did it just built it automatically like armor? There isn't an indicator on my habs that Point Defense Laser Turrets were installed nor does the tech say Point Defense Turrets are protecting me from future meteors... so am I covered or not?

Geoscape: Equatorial Boost production is how much better? I'd love a tooltip that quantified the difference. Knowing where the equator is by default would be nice on this topic. A nice bright line to indicate the equator for us that aren't used to working with globes would be appreciated!

Space Projects News Feed: A background pane for completed space projects would be nice.

Orgs (balance): I feel 25 is an insane number of Orgs to keep track of. In general XP is slow, and the admin org stacking meta is too real, and admin feels stronger than its counterparts as a result. It feels like a Research should be required to push Councilors beyond 10/15/20 ability caps, especially for Orgs.

Orgs: I'm only 20 hours in but the ability to merge Orgs into Conglomerates would be great. Or the ability to grant those Orgs back to Countries as a sweetener for ownership while neutering some of the direct benefits or only granting their benefits while in that exact Territory... something, ANYTHING to deal with the insane VOLUME of orgs would be appreciated. Unifying countries is a thing...

Space Resources Toolbar: To be honest I don't see why Space Resources are shown to the player at all while I'm strictly terrestrial. All of these materials are present on Earth too, and if I own a country with a resource region it's even more confusing.

Councilor Missions: While selecting a Councilor with a harmful ability -like Assassinate- if I try clicking a different Councilor to explore my options, the game thinks I want to try murdering that Councilor and beeps disconfirmation at me. I'm just trying to select a different councilor yo.

Councilor Missions: An Always-On background pane for advisor mission selections/launch options would help with readability. The "launch hab" button almost got missed because the button was positioned over ocean when it first popped up and the Background Pane wasn't up (my first Launch Facility was in Iceland lol).

General: I like the little Peace Dove that indicates I have a non-aggro pact with a country/org/etc's owner. :)

Country Policies: Claims on another country's territory should indicate what country currently holds that territory. Knowing Jamacia has a claim on San Juan, George Town, Kourou, & Pointe-a-Pitre is ineffable to me.

Country Priorities: Funding Investment Objective has a cap, which would be nice to see in the Investment tooltip. What this cap represents I would also like to know.

Country Priorities: The amount of progress made by direct investment is worth a full point of progress each, but it's not evident how much more that is than the gradual improvement process until I tried it. Murky.

Hostile Takeover panel: if I know which faction councilor an Org works for, that councilor's portrait will show instead of the faction's symbol. As a new player, mousing over the portrait to see which faction that is would be helpful. I haven't memorized all the colors yet.

Hostile Takover Panel: the Caution! triangles don't have mouseover tooltips... so I have no idea what they're warning me of.

Hostile Takeover Mission Selection Panel: to the left of the >HOSTILE TAKEOVER< button is a really useful little drop table which lists percentages. I would LOVE if it showed which faction the Org was owned by to help me kick my enemies in the teeth.

edit: I'm labeling this a Serotonin game. 🍃


This game is what it purports itself to be: a cute puzzle game of social interactions. Its art style is its charm. The world is painted in such a deeply-happy indie style that it lifts my spirits to play it. The throughline story is campy, but acceptable. The puzzles are real puzzles. Sometimes they're samey, but pretty always. Sometimes they're pretty difficult actually but the ambiance keeps the experience light. There's

There's plenty of levels and I didn't even finish them all...
but what I got already is enough to make this recommendation.

The gritty setup of the Story works. Your friend is kidnapped by an extremist government group and you have to cross the country while working gigs to pay your way so you can save him. But the dialogue is outrageously silly to the point of farce.

I could forgive that if the gameplay held up, but it's a step backwards from Not Tonight 1. There's little progression in difficulty. Instead, new cities have unique mechanics - but it's a grab bag. NYC in particular has an ill-conceived rhythm game which YOU THE PLAYER have to play for the entrants. It's so out of place.

That's a no from me dawg.

I like FP2 but it's not love. Time to cook is needed. By the time DLC starts coming out I believe the game will be refined.

Good atmosphere. Why not? It's free.

The setting is true 10/10. And I can dig the punishing atmosphere... when it's on purpose.

When it's only hard, the game is incredible. But mechanics work in questionable ways. They seem to come out of nowhere and are riddled with exceptions. The translation is poor in some key descriptions. Triggers break.

And buildings... oof. Buildings stretch to fill gaps, which is dumb as hell. When building dimensions expand you lose valuable space - key to survival. There's whole Steam community guides on how to trick building into not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ itself. It's on purpose but I don't think it should be.

The hardest difficulty, "Survivor", puts you in Ironman rules - not a good combo with jank. Worse, this hard mode also disables pause. Morphing Frostpunk into an RTS for the game's ultimate challenge feels wrong - like a spelling bee with a javelin toss. When each second matters the insufferable building mechanics overshadow even the cold. Losing an hour into a run because your build just wasn't enough already sucks. But when you lose to some mechanical problem like an idiot villager deciding not to eat it's damn frustrating.

The ludonarrative of Frostpunk works best at its max difficulty. That's where the fun is. But I think the speedrun-level of rote memorization required to overcome its unpolished components is overtuned. I'm hardly a casual player -I love a good deep dive- but this doesn't feel like a good RoI even for me.

I'd love to see an update for Frostpunk that clarifies some event triggers and gives pause back to Survivor mode. Its would really make a huge difference in my opinion.

Helldivers 2 is a physics sandbox where accidents happen and it's funny when they do.

HD2 is a mil horde shooter with (actually funny) satire, feature-complete movement mechanics, complex hitboxes, destructibility, coop multiplayer, lots of guns, drippy uniforms, terrifying enemies to turn the tables on, and... it's fun.

The devs get in their own way a lot, but
there's nothing else like it. Recommendo.

If you all die you just lose all the loot up to that point. You already get a money penalty for dying. No need for a second penalty that bones the run.

This creates a situation where the fastest way to continue having fun is to quit so you don't need to watch the death animation. I think that is a bad game loop.